Event 100

PONTI: SHARLENE TEO

Singaporean writer Sharlene Teo’s debut novel Ponti won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writer’s Award and was praised by Ian McEwan for its “brilliant descriptive power”, and for characters which “glow with life and humour and minutely observed desperation”. Teo sets her twisting and haunting story of an intense and unusual friendship between two women against the humming, shifting atmosphere of contemporary Singapore. She speaks with Pip Adam about her breakthrough debut.